


Beam Me Up Caldy

by clouder (selfinduced)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-01
Updated: 2007-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 09:36:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selfinduced/pseuds/clouder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fic! also known as: That Thing That is Not The Thing, or, alternatively, OH MY GOD, I HAVEN’T FINISHED ANYTHING SINCE I WAS SEVENTEEN.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beam Me Up Caldy

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for episode 2xsomething, Trinity. mistakes are entirely mine, not [info]iamjustme's. (duh) and uh, HAPPY belated BIRTHDAY YIN! (i bet you thought i forgot, didn't you?) apologies for the lack of pr0n.

(Later, if you ask John, he’ll say it was never really a Thing. Rodney would of course, disagree, and say that two years is definitely long enough for anything you actively don’t do to become a Thing.)

-

The DHD lights up, flickers, and dies back down with an ominous whir.

“Oh no.” McKay’s lopsided mouth falls open as he looks back at the now inactive gate. “That’s not good.”

“I hate it when you say that.”

“I’m sorry Colonel, but I can’t always be devoted to making you happy.”

“I don’t see why not!”

Sheppard’s voice is properly indignant but his eyes are light and the corner of his mouth twitches a little as he pulls up a blasted piece of console next to Ronon and Teyla who are watching the interchange with their usual vaguely amused indulgence and settles in to wait for the full diagnoses, and subsequent cure of whatever’s ailing the ‘gate.

“Well, first of all, all of this equipment is so badly damaged that I’m surprised the gate activated in the first place and held long enough to let the MALP and us through—but” McKay gets distracted by a panel on one of the remaining walls near the DHD, waving his hand over it impatiently before Sheppard can stop him, and the wall-that’s-really-a-door opens up into a mostly undamaged section of the otherwise destroyed building housing the stargate.

There seems to be no immediate danger, so Sheppard is content to follow him into what looks like a reactor chamber of sorts.

“I do not claim to be an expert in these matters, but does this not resemble the facility at Doranda, Rodney?”

McKay shoots a dirty look at Teyla, and Ronon turns from where he’s guarding the entryway to poke his head through the door curiously.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Sheppard eyes McKay speculatively.

“A little, yes.” His mouth thins. “Okay, yes, definitely. This is the power source for the whole place and has the most amount of unscathed equipment, ergo, where I need to work if I’m to get us back home.”

Sheppard gets a brief, terrifying flash of Doranda and Project Arcturous with McKay in place of Collins.

“It’s damaged enough, Rodney. And if it’s anything like Doranda, very likely to blow if you start doing anything with what’s left of the power source.”

“But what I just did activated the shield on the gate from this side and there’s no way there’s enough power already available here to turn it off so we can go through and not enough unscathed equipment left out there to jury rig it even if we could contact Atlantis and they dialed in from the other side!”

“It’d take the Daedalus three hours to get within range to beam us out of here without us possibly being blown up,"

“The Daedalus—!”

“—so no, Rodney. You can work on it from what’s left outside. Three hours is plenty of time for you to pull off a miracle if one is possible.”

McKay looks like he’s about to argue, but thinks better of it, shoulders slumping as they file back out to the demolished gate-room, face doing that unbearably expressive thing where it’s obvious he’s feeling insecure about the whole blowing-up-a-solar-system-and-losing-John’s-trust thing and John feels a little guilty for mentioning it, but really, it couldn’t be helped.

And besides, Teyla did it first.

-

They spread out to sit near Rodney and hand him things as he asks for them, and be annoying and distracting because they have nothing better to do, really. And the annoyance is mostly provided by John, because Teyla and Ronon are busy comparing stories of the fighting techniques of some legendary warriors called the Ikaba-something-or-other.

John’s not as adamant about pushing Rodney as he usually is, concentrating more on the being distracting area, due to the lack of mortal danger if Rodney doesn’t get it fixed. The thing is, John doesn’t really mind the wait, his first chance to sit still and do nothing but watch Rodney McKay work, hands deliberate and competent, even when he doesn’t really know what he’s doing.

(The thing with McKay is that—he has this mouth—it’s—there’s a slant to it, lopsided, in a way that should be annoying because it’s smug, but it’s also just Rodney, falling down at the corner like the way his voice trails off when he’s awed and it makes John want to do things like push him back into the wall and hold him still by the arms so he can get his tongue at it.

And then he snaps his fingers at John, asking for a knife, or to “Touch this, Colonel” “And press that” and it’s never “Touch me”—but it’s pretty much a lost cause as soon as he starts waggling those long fingers in John’s face like some absurdly effective and obscene fetish porn. John’s going to lose it one of these days, finally crack from the pressures of a new fucking galaxy that have yet to make a notable difference in his sanity—they’re just building up and waiting for the worst moment, he can feel it—and it’s going to cause problems.)

When McKay whines about the lack of non-charred parts needed to even think about trying to fix anything, Sheppard shrugs and looks over at Ronon, who is starting to get seriously antsy.

“Fine. Stay here with Teyla. Ronon and I’ll take a look around, see if we can find anything.”

-

It’s a long frustrating half hour before Rodney sits back and throws down a shard of blackened crystal in disgust.

Teyla, who has been silently helpful the entire time, nods her head towards him.

“I do not think Colonel Sheppard is that greatly upset that we must be rescued by Colonel Caldwell.”

Rodney whirls his head around to meet her eyes, staring at her open-mouthed for a while before snapping it shut.

“Yes he is. He just—he’d rather that we’re all safe, so he won’t say anything.”

Teyla is silent.

“And besides, I can fix it! Probably.” Rodney gets back up, and goes toward the power-supply room.

“I know his opinion is important to you, but do you not think that he will be even more upset if he finds that you have disobeyed orders and risked injury when help is already on the way?”

Rodney juts his chin out stubbornly. “I just want to take a good look, maybe bring out some parts. I won’t be in there for long.”

Teyla sighs and stands guard at the door—for both the scientist, and against the premature return of his Colonel.

-

John’s not really intent on the looking-for-undamaged-parts thing. They all know it’s a moot point.

Colonel Caldwell will come to the rescue with his magical Asgard ship and sparkly matter-transferring beam and everything will be fine and John will not be petty and resentful because the safety of his team is more important than that.

Walking with Ronon is good in that the guy is great at simple, meaningless silences. There’s no concerned, but patient looks like he’d be getting from Teyla.

John keeps one eye on his surroundings and lets his mind turn back to McKay, who has been going on and on lately about all the information they’re getting back from Earth, in particular, from Colonel Samantha Carter.

(Despite everything,—Rodney’s got a pretty apparent case of hero worship, John knows this. He doesn’t miss the way Rodney agrees to his crazy stunts even before he learned to trust John’s luck, or how he works better, faster, more brilliant when John’s looking over his shoulder. The bright-eyed looks he shoots at John sometimes at the littlest signs of approval. They make his stomach do weird dives like the wobble of F-302s before they properly settle into planetary orbit.—Rodney’s, well, straight.

It’s not that he’s homophobic, or repressed or anything—he’s just straight.

John knows this because somewhere between shooting the man in the leg and shoving him off a balcony, he’s gotten into the habit of not only wanting to know him to better watch out for him as a teammate, but just watching Rodney.

Looking past his vocal appreciation for “dumb blondes”, Rodney is just a regular guy. Insanely smart, so attracted to other intelligence—and there is none higher than Colonel Carter in that area, after Rodney himself, of course—and socially awkward, so not the type to silently check out all the women around him just like every other straight man Sheppard’s known, but it’s not like he doesn’t do it at all. He’s just more obtrusive about it, when he does.

But John imagines anyway, that one of these days, when he does give in and do something stupid, it’ll probably be one of those end-of-the-universe-as-we-know-it or we-have-38.5473-hours-left-to-live things so it won’t be like he’ll have too long to live with the shock and possible disappointment he’ll have to face.)

-

Which is why it doesn’t actually register as real actions when he finally breaks during a non post-apocalyptic-near-miss—just a regular “beam us out, Caldy” mission.

They hear the explosion and run back to the ruins of the control room to find an unconscious Teyla in the door-way of the very-likely-to-blow-up power-source chamber just as the Daedalus arrives. Ronon, carrying Teyla’s limp form, is beamed aboard immediately.

Rodney’s face is pinched and white and guilty as he backs away, and somewhere between calling him twenty different kinds of stupid, and shoving him into a half-slagged console and kissing the hell out of him, John realizes what he’s doing, and the lack of imminent doom, but it’s too late to backtrack successfully, even with his luck.

“Colonel—John—what. Hmmm. Oh.” McKay mumbles and flails at John’s vest for a bit before settling nervously down and clutching tight.

For one long, sweet moment, it’s just the freefall of McKay kissing him back and making everything else stop, phase out of significant reality, and anything, everything, is possible.

John’s feeling giddy and dangerous like fractals spinning out of control into derivations of possibility. He pulls back, takes a second to look at the wide blue eyes and open, wet mouth before kissing Rodney again, letting the side of his thumb slide over a flushed cheekbone.

 

“Dr. McKay, Colonel Sheppard, stand ready for pickup.”

The Daedalus crew, having attended to Teyla and ascertained that nothing else is wrong, beams them on board as well.

-

It’s true they both have a busy work-schedule, but John’s always found time before to visit McKay in the labs, or make sure to show up to the mess at the same time for meals.

So it may actually be John’s fault then, that they manage to successfully not act like it happened for at least a week, until they step onto this stupid planet where they’re stuck walking a stupidly long way towards a village of people Teyla assures them are good trading partners from where they hide the jumper.

The thing with the Not Talking thing is that it creates a sort of intense silence that makes Teyla, Ronon, and anyone else in their vicinity uncomfortable and drives them away. Immediately.

Currently, John and Rodney are a quarter of a mile behind the rest of their team. In clear sight, but effectively out of hearing distance. John waits for Rodney to say something—some comment on what they’re tracking, the hidden dangers of this world, the possibility of being forced to engage in compromising initiation rituals involving lemons by the villagers—anything.

And when he doesn’t even by the time they’re within sight of the village, John says in a calm, practically gruff voice (desperately blurts out) “Sorry.”

McKay falters in his walk, whipping his head away from the datapad in his hand, staring at John as if he’d just spoken some alien language. John chances one quick glance at his face, brows furrowed and lopsided mouth open at the corner, and directs his attention back to what looks suspiciously like dandelions that he’s crushing under his feet.

“I mean.”

“Colonel—John, shut up.”

Sheppard stops in the middle of his sentence, giving him an are you fucking kidding me? look because usually it’s McKay who talks nonstop and he can’t be telling anyone to shut up. But Rodney’s been unusually quiet ever since The Thing and it makes John all kinds of nervous, and, talkative. Apparently.

John picks a not-dandelion and starts twisting the stem into various shapes, tying knots. The stem is pretty limber. He pretends not to be aware of the long searching looks Rodney’s giving him, furtive, but deliberate, from beneath those long, bright lashes that glitter in the sun and make John experience strange urges to reach out and brush his thumb over them. He ends up with half-moons of almost-broken skin on his palm from the way he clenches in his fingers and keeps them forced to his sides and not in his pocket.

Rodney keeps up watching him, and it makes him oddly over-warm and shivery, like standing still out in a desert sun too long, but his mind flicks back to what Rodney’s probably thinking, and it’s suddenly a whole lot more uncomfortable. The hero-worship saved him from complete disgust—he can tell that Rodney is more confused than anything. Flattered, maybe. John’ll have to make sure not to let it get to the man’s head.

-

When they get to the village, McKay returns his jibes and talks and eats their strange-but-familiar food while complaining about potential death the whole time the way he always has and everything is good. If not perfect.

Since it’s not like John ever expects “good,” let alone “perfect” from his life, it works fine.

-

John’s not skulking around the labs because he missed Rodney at dinner in the mess and got paranoid that the “normal” they reached earlier in the day while off-world doesn’t extend to Atlantis.

And John doesn’t really want to know what Rodney is saying when he wobbles in his chair and leans his head precariously down onto the lab bench next to Zelenka, flailing a hand out for support, surrounded by a scary number of empty bottles of what is probably “Gross, American beer,” (Rodney’s own words). But Zelenka looks almost as far gone as Rodney, and John figures he should at least get Rodney to his room safely for what’s left of the night. He seems drunk enough for the awkwardness of interaction to not be a problem.

John doesn’t rest his hand on Rodney’s back longer or pull him closer against his side than necessary. Actually, it’s Rodney who does the imitation of a very talkative blanket, draping himself onto John and hiding his face in John’s neck, stumbling along with John’s steps the entire way to his room. John doesn’t take advantage of this, other than to get him into bed—for sleeping—and debates for a second on whether he should help with the shoes before going down to his knees.

There’s a finger hovering over his jaw, impossibly warm. Just one finger. And Rodney’s eyes are brighter and clearer than they’ve ever been, no confusion in them now. John swallows dryly, looks down at the shoe he was going to work on first, but the finger finally lands on his cheek and traces down, hooks under his chin and faces him back up. He figures it’s a lost cause and lets Rodney look his fill. Maybe see all the things he now knows to look for and doesn’t want.

John’s mouth quirks at one corner sardonically.

And that’s when Rodney leans down, intense and curious and focused on John’s not-smile, on the inside of his lower lip as he lets out a little breath in surprise, almost kisses back before moving away.

Rodney follows, overbalancing him until John’s sprawled out under him, cupping a hand almost sweetly around John’s cheek, and kisses him again, insistent, demanding, unbelievably careful for someone so intoxicated.

“It’s—God, Rodney, stop.” John manages to get a hold of both of his wrists and take some deep shuddering breaths before smiling self-deprecatingly at the blurrily confused look McKay is giving him. “You’re drunk.”

McKay shakes his head and leans forward again, mouthing the point of his jaw, and John’s hips stutter up a little before he pulls away as far as possible into the floor.

“And straight.”

McKay snorts a little into his shoulder and presses his erection into John’s thigh.

“That doesn’t prove much!”

“Does too.” The mumble is a petulant chuff of warm air against the base of his neck that should really not be as hot as it is.

John thinks very hard at the floor beneath him to turn into some sort of trapdoor, anything, and Rodney is laughing quietly into his collarbone.

“I’m on top of you, you can’t avoid me.”

“Sure I can Rodney. You’ll be passing out any time now.”

“I’m not that drunk. It was shitty stuff. I swear Zelenka poisoned it more with orange juice.”

“Poor you.”

“Yes. I was trying to find clarity in drunkenness—”

“You were what?” Sheppard laughs at him.

“Shut up. Anyway, all I got was shitty tasting beer and Zelenka thinking that we’re—you and I, not me’n Z’lenka—are in some sort of stupid star-crossed Romeo and Juliet West Side Story RE-LAYH-SHUN-SHIP. You’re Juliet by the way. Since the science team is definitely Montague. Capulets always start the fights.”

“You are drunk.” John was beginning to wonder.

“Not enough.”

“I said I was sorry.” (He’s talking about The Thing and they both know it.)

“Yes, well, it can’t be helped that your number crunching and military grunt skills don’t transfer over to mean anything in the way of perception.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re an idiot.”

“That part I understood, thanks.”

“You.” Rodney mouths again, lips brushing John’s, “Are. Stupid.” and John may have made some sort of sound this time, hands still holding Rodney’s captive at his sides, actively not raising up into the kiss.

For someone who’s new to this, Rodney’s awfully good at kissing a guy, his thigh shifting between John’s in just the right way and John really can’t hold up against that for long.

He’s just figured out how best to flip them over so Rodney’s relaxed weight could be accounted for without causing serious physical damage, when Rodney says it.

“God, you’re hot.” Quietly, voice more rough and warm than alcohol-slurred.

John freezes mid-flip, spine stiff and straight, knees digging into Rodney’s thighs and an arm across both of Rodney’s wrists, now held above his head.

“Um. What?”

“You heard me.” Rodney’s eyes are dark with dilated pupils and his mouth is shiny and open in the way that drives John crazy and John isn’t really sure of anything at this point, other than that he’s really, dangerously, turned on.

“Is—” His voice sticks in his throat and he has to pause for a second, “Is this something new?”

“Yes.”

And John nods, once, like he totally understands (which he doesn’t) and starts getting up.

“If by new you mean that you’re the first to think of acting on it.”

John stops, heart in his throat.

“I’m a genius, but my brilliance was occupied, you know, saving our lives.” Rodney smiles a little, using a now-free hand to stroke down one splayed thigh pinning him in place. John swallows.

“It didn’t occur to me that I could—that we—you’d want—” He waves his other hand between them eloquently, “I usually do like women. And you’re. You know.” Rodney shrugs a little, continuing with a series of fragmented thoughts, each coming faster and higher pitched than the last: “I guess you have to be, being in the American Air Force, but yes. I didn’t guess. I was just.” Rodney pushes himself up so now he’s sitting with John still straddling his lap, faces close enough together to feel each other’s warmth. “I was just happy that we were, uh. Friends? Sort of.” he finishes.

“We are.” John assures him quietly, breath soft and hopeful and desperate.

“But you want—”

“You don’t have to—”

“I want, too.” John finds Rodney’s fingers curling through his on the floor. His cheek leaning across the small space between them to touch John’s, feel the muscles of John’s face curve into a slow, wide grin.

“Yeah?”

“In conclusion: idiot.”

“But.” John doesn’t say anything inexcusably stupid, like, yours, just, “That’s okay right?”

“Hmm. Let’s see.” Rodney rolls his hips up into John’s. They both breathe a little faster. “Yep. Still okay.”

John laughs and kisses him before Rodney can add: “I mean, anyway, it’s not like you’ll be bearing my children.”

John smacks him upside the head.

“Way to ruin the mood, McKay.”

“Hey! You’re the one that had the hots for me so bad you couldn’t help yourself.”

“That’s it, you’re sleeping on the couch.”

“We haven’t even gotten to second base and you’re already withholding sex?”

“That’s right.”

“We don’t even have a couch!”

John shrugs, hands busy under Rodney’s shirt.

“I hate this galaxy.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad.” John licks at his ear, “I kinda like it here.”


End file.
